Personally I think this is a really interesting discussion. I am an engineer at Honda R&D near Columbus, OH. At my location, there are over a thousand white collar workers, mostly technical. Within a hundred mile radius of me, there are a 4 Honda assembly plants, employing around 10,000 people. At other sites in the US and Canada, there are probably another 15,000 workers. Each of these plants is turning out thousands of new Hondas per day. Nearly every Honda/Acura sold in the US (by volume) is made in the US. The engines, transmissions, every major component. Furthermore, Honda actually *exports* cars from the US, something that the Big 3 can barely talk about. Sure, there are niche cars like the S2000 roadster that are 100% Japanese, but that is a tiny part of our market. I think these are pretty impressive numbers, especially if you consider that Honda is only something like the 7th largest market share in the US. Its been here since 1979, I'd wager that in those 27 years Honda has contributed significantly to Americans and their way of life. There are a lot of secure $25/hr plus full benefits jobs available in Ohio because of Honda. The US auto industry lost their way in the oil crises. They haven't been able to turn it around since then. They concentrate too much on short-sighted markets like giant fuel-guzzling SUVs. Its not that the Big 3 makes bad cars, its that they make cars that aren't in demand. Compare a Focus to a Civic. A Taurus to an Accord. Sure, those Fords might last 200k miles, but I'd much rather spend that time in a nice Accord than a hard plastic Taurus. I would rather support the thousands of American workers who build Hondas than support a few suits in Detroit and drive a Mexican Dodge. That said, my garage: 1980 Lawn Boy 7229 1996 Stihl trimmer 1997 Honda Accord (shocking, right?) 2002 Triumph Speed Triple (mc) 1976 Honda CB400F (mc) 1976 Suzuki GT550 2-stroke (mc) 1948 Johnson Sea Horse (outboard) 1949 Evinrude Zephyr (outboard)

No great words of wisdom for you, but a couple of thoughts. For my older boys we bought the older one a subaru wrx and middle one a used saab 9-3. While they both have been amazingly trouble free, when they do need work the things that are wrong need to go the dealer and it's been expensive. In particular with the Saab - they don't sell them anymore so parts are pricey and hard to come by - some impossible. That said, son #3 now has his temps and I've decided he can only buy American or Honda or Toyota. Looking at a several year old Ford Escape with AWD - not real sexy, but safe and functional. I personally love a new car, and have leased my last two vehicles. I drive them three years and take them back! My DH is a drive to the ground guy, actually takes pride in how many miles he can get out of a car. I believe BMW includes all the maintenance on their cars so you have to factor in those fees you'll also have to pay on a different car that probably will need some work. I'd keep the BMW, cancel the collision insurance on the Jeep since it's so old, and buy the girls a decent enough car that it will last at least 6 years. I think the 2010+ Fords are all good quality, and reasonably priced. I like the Ford Fusion. I also am a huge fan of Honda Accords and Civics. You should be able to find a fairly decent one for under $10,000. Goodluck, teen drivers are not for the faint of heart.

toomuchclass, you asked about the other homes on our street and in our neighborhood. We have quite a mix of architecture on our street. It's an old subdivision and some of the houses sit on 1/2 acre of land and have been there a lot of years. They are designed like ours in the old fashion Acadian style, but are about 4 times as large. LOL Some look like mini plantations. Just a few blocks away are a few full size plantation homes. The town we are moving too is close to the Mississippi river and the River Rd. as it's called is lined with some plantations from the 1800's. One of the most famous is just 1/2 mile from our house. It's a tourist attraction now. Then we have some newer homes that look like they belong in California, huge 2 story adobe's with palm trees lining the circular drive. Then we have the average 1 story ranch style. We even have a couple of gingerbread victorian styles. We are on the main street of the subdivision and some of the lots are quite large so that gives people the option of building really big if they want to. So it's quite a mix. I believe our house is most probably the smallest one though. There is a minimum sq. ft. required by the subdivisions covenant and we went with the minimum because we didn't want a huge house for the 2 of us. Just more to heat, cool and keep clean. There is no other that looks exactly like ours and I guess that's why people stop to compliment us on the style. Everyone comments on our unique roof. Today the young folks aren't looking to build this style of house so it's pretty unique to see one like it coming up in the subdivision. All the ones coming up are large California style houses/mansions. The house just next door to ours is a 2 story brick. I'm not even sure of the style, it's just a plain 2 story house. Directly across the street from us is a huge mansion of 2 stories with beautiful gardens that circle the entire property. Houses like that one surely won't hurt my property value. HA! HA! It's such a lovely scene to walk out my front door and see that house. Nothing like what I have to look at right now. Not pretty at all!!! An abandoned house, a victim of Katrina and no insurance.

David- Those maps confirm a few thoughts of mine as well as my experience: Minor/short term droughts (D0 and D1 on the drought monitor) in the Mid-Atlantic are far more common here than Ohio, occurring somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic almost yearly, at least for a month or two. Severe, long term droughts, however are pretty rare, as is the case for most of the Eastern Seaboard. Our last really bad one was 2001-2002, and I lived in Ohio at the time (OH did have a moderate drought one of those summers IIRC). 2007 was fairly bad, but ended quickly with winter and spring rains in ’08. Ohio, however, is more prone to the droughts that spread from the Central Plains and those can be more severe than what we get in MD, especially in NW Ohio around Toledo, which tends to be drier than the rest of the state anyway. Summer rainfall reliability – the Standard deviation issue is real – while average JJA rainfall in Akron and Baltimore is not all that different (around 4” for June and July and 3.5” for August, more or less), Ohio’s cooler summers mean more overall moisture stays in the soil (the difference is admittedly probably slight – temps only run about 5 degrees cooler), and our reality in MD is that 4” average for July really means about 3 years out of ten where we get 5” or more, 4 years we get under 3”, and a couple that might work out near “normal”. Ohio does see that but to a lesser degree from what I remember – except for 2003, when my backyard rain gauge in Akron clocked 11.23” of rain for July. Although we’d all love to just have a nice 1” of rain every 6-10 days all summer, falling over a 12 hour period at night, with sunshine in between, it doesn’t ever work out that way. Reality is we’ll get 3” in a thunderstorm, then nothing for 3 weeks, but plenty of dreary days scattered within, with sprinkles or pathetic showers, where the average clueless Joe says “but it rained yesterday!” when I complain about watering the garden…but Joe doesn’t understand that the 0.02” of rain that ruined his son’s soccer game didn’t do jack squat for my plants.